Los Angeles Immigration Law Blog

President Trump's continuing effort to use administrative declarations to raise the barriers to lawful admission into the United States hit another roadblock in San Francisco on November 18. A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order that prevented enforcement of the president's declaration that persons seeking asylum could not enter the United States except through lawful ports of entry.

The dispute began on November 9 when President Trump signed a proclamation that banned migrants from applying for asylum if they failed to make the request at a legal checkpoint. The president said that national security required the limitation, but he did so without presenting any supporting evidence. The rule was allowed to become effective even though it had not been published in the Federal Register or been subjected to public review and comment.

American citizens should be free of any worry about being deported, but apparently, American citizenship is not a complete barrier against ill-advised and illegal deportation proceedings. A resident of San Bernardino who is an American citizen was illegally detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and repeatedly threatened with deportation, even after she insisted on several occasions that she was an American citizen.

The incident began when the woman visited the Ontario Police Department to reclaim her lawfully registered pistol after it had been taken from her car following a traffic accident. The woman was arrested and incarcerated. ICE sent the Sheriff's Office an immigration detainer asking that it hold the woman. After her release, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on her behalf against ICE, the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Office and the state of California.

Many immigrants in southern California are in the United States because they enjoy protection under the Temporary Protected Status program (TPS). In its never-ending campaign to remove such protections, the Trump Administration recently announced a plan to terminate the TPS program for immigrants from Sudan, El Salvador, Haiti and Nicaragua. The announcement immediately threatened immigrants from these countries will imminent deportation. However, a federal judge in Los Angeles issued an injunction that requires the government to maintain the program and the protected status of its beneficiaries while a class action that challenges the validity of the termination proposal comes to trial.

The TPS program is intended to provide favored immigration status for immigrants from countries that are suffering from dire conditions, such as epidemics, war or natural disaster. Prior administrations were willing to continue the program, but the Trump administration is intent upon ending the protections, saying they are no longer necessary.

One of the longest standing judicial rulings that affects immigrant families is the class action consent decree known as the Flores Settlement. The settlement is named after the young Hispanic girl who was reunited with her parents as the result of that settlement. She had been incarcerated with adult men and stripped searched every day while in lengthy government custody. The settlement requires that migrant children be released from custody without unnecessary delay or transferred to a licensed child care facility. In emergency, the time limit can be extended to twenty days.

The Trump administration recently filed proposed rules intended to allow minors to be held beyond the current limit of 20 days and to relax the licensing requirements for temporary housing facilities. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said that the restrictions of the Flores consent decree were "legal loopholes" that significantly hinder the department's ability to appropriately detain and promptly remove family units that have no legal basis to remain in the country." In other words, the effort to amend the terms of the Flores Consent Decree is nothing more than an effort to extend the government's "zero tolerance" treatment of immigrant families.